"For the spin drive, you will find the spacing is more to the side and less forward" - yes, yes, a very overlooked dynamic. The racquet moves from back to front at a 45 deg. angle, so the arm movement and direction is not foward but angled and then quickly across. This creates the max acceleration and enables the straight or bent arm to work well. Straight arm with forward acceleration won't work as well, and might be more stressful to shoulder. Great comments. You make me really concentrate to follow your ideas. I read most of blog and will review again. Maybe we'll meet again.

In any case, I think it is acceptable to have some slight double bend and still get the Nadal effect. Alot of arm muscle tension going from nearly straight to all the way straight swinging outwards to contact. I'm not so young to want to rip my forearm and bicep fibers twisting it that hard. lol

I definitely agree with that, Ron. Rafa has to have more tension in the back leg thrust, causing tremendous knee and hip strain holding the majority of his body weight. That inside out forehand "lift up" response really strains that leg and hip even further. Kuerten's own forehand on one leg motion damaged his hip and career. Federer talks about that somewhere in an interview, about making sure to not damage anything due to mechanics.

I think of the dropweight cam tensioner/ loading and tensioning a string" when I think of the windup. You want to start bent, then judge the amount of slack needed (distance to the ball along with degree of bent elbow)--- to arrive at the straight arm at contact. For the spin drive, you will find the spacing is more to the side and less forward. My footage of Rafa practicing confirms my theory. lol He is hitting well to his side and hooks it with all that torque.

Rafa may need to "tighten" up more some of the other players in order to get so much power and spin. This might be hard on his body and knees. He has to hold that position very firmly in order to get so much whip. Not as fluid as Djokovic and Federer. His knee problems might be caused by something else. Maybe the amount of running around the backhand, with such intense changes of direction.

Yeah, just scroll down the main page of Tennisopolis. It's the one with the Djokovic picture: "Balance on your groundies". I definitely think you're a natural hook swinger, so the Rafa mechanics works for you. Check out my other blog (maybe look on my page and click Blogs) on "The Advanced Forehand".

Great sequence. I can get get more power with less effort using a straight arm, but I'm not always core strong enough to keep stable and balanced (double bend feels more stable). I need to work on my weight transfer when I lean back like Rafa does. I seem to be mistiming the ball so I don't get the full benefit of that back and down. But, it's natural for me to do that. Like you point out, it might be better to focus on lifting up more than coming forward so much. I'll check your blog if I can find it. Thanks.